Not Yet
by kneipho
Summary: The inevitable "Endgame Addition Fic". Two years after the crew makes it home, Janeway and Chakotay run into each other by chance.


Disclaimer: No characters belong to me. The thoughts, expressed, however are mine alone. No profit made, no harm intended.

Title: Not Yet

Author: kneipho  
Beta: The Fabulous Gill Hoyle  
Rating: T (PG13)

Fandom: VOY  
Character/Pairing Codes: J/C with references to C/7

Written for Jett Wall.

"Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?  
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.  
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.  
I do not think that they will sing to me."  
—The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock  
by Thomas Sterns Eliot

* * *

It had been a long while since they had seen each other last, at least two Earth years, possibly more. She had come out of the Lecture Hall, tired, glad to step outside into the fresh air after so many hours indoors. Her throat was dry from answering too many questions asked by too many eager cadets. Teaching between Starfleet assignments was a decent way to pass the time. Kathryn enjoyed it, but there were days she wished it were a more physical occupation. Cocking her head slightly, she squinted into the bright San Francisco sun -and literally bumped into him blind.

Chakotay of Trebus: Former Federation Outlaw turned Archeologist, Delta Quadrant Survivor and her former First Officer.

They stood there for a moment, regarding each other in awkward silence. "What are you doing here?" she blurted without preamble.

"I had to drop something off at the Archeology department." His words were stumbling over themselves. He was mumbling. "I'm on the Earth for a conference."

"I'm sorry, what did you say? I didn't catch all of that."

"Never mind. You're an Academy instructor, now?"

"Yes, I am."

"Oh." He struggled hard to articulate his he next question. "Do you like it?"

She blinked. "For the most part."

They were quiet, again, standing there, two deliberate statues. Just when she began to think they might remain like that forever, he reached for her hand and she found herself tugging him into her arms and hugging him tightly. She missed him. He had been her best friend throughout an unforgettable epoch in her life. The spicy scent of his cologne drifted into her nostrils, and she tried to ignore how good he smelled.

The contact felt wrong, somehow. Her reaction to the embrace, unsettling. She plucked herself away.

"I was just about to go and get a cup of coffee. Care to join me?" she queried politely, knowing he would refuse. How many times had she asked him that or something similar, over the years? _O__ne hundred times? _she wondered._Two hundred? More? Does he still drink coffee occasionally, or has he reverted to strictly tea?_He stared at her, like deer stare directly into an unanticipated radiation of light. Kathryn squirmed, wanting him to reject her offer quickly, so she could leave. She had things to do —a dog that needed feeding, at home. She waited for him to excuse himself and troll away across campus.

"My rooms are a few blocks from here." he said. "If you don't mind drinking your beverage replicated, we could... That is..." The invitation remained incomplete, his sentence trailing off into a brief detour of nothing. He looked appalled —bewildered that he had actually solicited her presence to his hotel.

So did she.

* * *

The suite was a declaration of elegance gone by: the main room elaborately decorated in a classic antique style complete with Queen Anne settee, table, chairs and manual doors made of dark wood with painted knobs. Kathryn peeked over at Chakotay from across the table. He sat. wedged into a corner next to a large lace covered window, his legs and torso too broad to be jammed between the dainty arms of such fragile furnishings. She decided he resembled a big brown bear at a formal tea party. It was ludicrous. She could almost hear his seat groaning in pain.

Their visitation was not going well, the conversation dull. They discussed life away from the Delta Quadrant and personal adjustments with superficial interest. Chakotay had replicated himself a pot of herbal tea, quietly answering Kathryn's earlier unasked question. It sat on the table, cold and untouched, the round base manufacturing a wet ring on the crisp white tablecloth. He tapped on the fat kettle occasionally with a long-necked spoon, producing an annoying pinging sound. Kathryn frowned. _Is it my imagination, or is he doing that on purpose? _She brought her cup to her lips for the umpteenth time. She had consumed four servings of Vienna Roast, all in little sips. It gave her something to do during the frequent gaps in the conversation. It was also amusing to watch him squeeze in and out of his chair, bobbing up and down, like a rusty jack-in-the-box, repeatedly fetching her cups of coffee.

She felt herself keying up —agitation playing at her nerves as the caffeine explored system. They continued to hack verbally through a tangle of subjects: The Maquis re-integration into Federation society, the doctor's struggle for the acceptance of holographic rights, how much Miral Paris had grown...

Seven of Nine.

"I won't apologize for what happened between Seven and me." Chakotay articulated the statement fixedly, etching a thin line in the proverbial sand. "Not to you or anyone." Kathryn closed her eyes, bathing the orbs in gulfs of red. She realized he had been waiting for this, waiting for this topic's emergence ever since they had stepped into his suite._Good._So had she. "I do feel badly for hurting you." he went on. "But I'm grateful to Seven for helping me rediscover myself and always will be. I was not very happy those last few years on _Voyager_."

"A lot of people were unhappy, Chakotay." Kathryn heard herself say. "I was unhappy."

"Ah, but you were in control, you made the rules. You had your command and the respect and loyalty of the crew."

"What are you talking about? So did you. We were a team."

"Were we? Maybe for a while, in the beginning." He studied the ceiling with care, his expression rueful. "Do you know what some of the crew used to call me behind my back? 'The Captain's Lapdog'." Kathryn opened her mouth to speak, then closed it. She realized she might laugh in his face. "I needed to get on with my life," he said. "What was I supposed to do?"

"I don't know, Chakotay." she responded. "Carve something —go to the holodeck."

"Fair Haven kind of did me in on holo-romance."

She wanted to kick him under the table. She didn't. "There were plenty of unidentified flying aliens within reach." she stated flatly.

"I caught a few, remember? They weren't very tasty."

Kathryn did kick him then, hard. He grunted. "You could have practiced self-control instead of self-indulgence through sex with an inexperienced young woman. I was lonely too... I thought we had an understanding."

"An understanding? Did we, now?"

"It was a delicate situation."

"My commission was unconventional -borne from our predicament, and technically, she had no real rank."

"That's not what I meant. But now that you've brought it up, what you did was reprehensible. You were in a position of authority."

"Right. Tell me you never showed Seven an ounce of favoritism."

"What does that mean?"

"I wasn't blind, Kathryn."

"Don't try to turn this into something else. It's not fair. You knew how I felt about you."

He smirked mirthlessly. "I refuse to be cast as the cad in a melodrama."

"You haven't changed a bit. You still think like a Maquis. Befuddle the issue, then claim to be beyond reproach."

"Oh come on! Don't sit there and tell me I knew how you felt about me... I knew how I felt about you. It wasn't as if I kept my feelings a secret. Hell, Kathryn, everyone on _Voyager_ knew how I felt about you. You were the one who never wanted to talk about how you felt. You were too busy hiding behind Mark and your captaincy. In seven years, undefined parameters and suggested protocol guidelines were as far as we got."

She took a deep breath. He was making her angry. "Over simplifying the situation won't alter anything."

"Neither will playing the self-righteous, above-it-all Starfleet Captain."

That comment stung. "I see you've forgotten about that mess with Seska already."

Chakotay didn't say anything for a long moment. He just sat there looking at her. When he finally chose to speak his voice was soft, nebulous. "Are you suggesting the deception implemented by that evil Cardassian witch was a point of understanding?"

She stared at the teapot with the ring underneath. It hinted in a hush that it was time to leave.

"Answer me, Kathryn!" His sudden shout made her jump. She scooted her chair backwards and stood up straight. Chakotay stood up too -his chair flipping over as it crashed to the floor. His face mottled with several crimson patches. She didn't care. He was being a jackass. "Sit down," he growled. "We're not finished yet." She threw him a double take glare, needles of condescension hurtling toward the bridge of his nose. She turned toward the door.

In one fluid moment, Chakotay was across the room, preventing her egress by forcing her forward into the door as she swerved to escape. Kathryn threw both of her arms outward to prevent herself from smacking into solid wood as he reached over her left shoulder and slammed one hand palm flat, fingers splayed wide, near the side of her head. His other hand-made a mad dash up the right side of her body past her hip, swallowing the doorknob in a balled fist.

She sneered; flipping around to face him, her back against the hard oak door, her facial cast a mask of superiority. "Finally decided to chew off your collar, Chakotay?"

He leaned in close, panting into her face —stray huffs of air rasping past the side of her jaw and into her ear. His voice was barely a whisper, but the words came out clipped and controlled. "I want to know." he bit out. "When did we come to an understanding? Was it after Seska died? Because I don't recall having that little chat."

"Shut up."

"No? Was it before I slept with Riley? Before Kashyk? Before or after you took Michael Sullivan on a grand tour around our ship?"

She bounced back another version of her earlier accusation. "You knew I had feelings for you. "

"No, Kathryn. I knew you would never even look at me as long as we were on _Voyager_. I knew we weren't going to get home anytime soon."

Her skin was flaming; she could feel the blush spreading from the inside out. She was more than angry. It was all too much. "Stand aside," she ordered. "Let me out."

His posture relaxed as he removed himself from her path; his arms clapping loudly as they retreated against his sides. When he spoke this time, his tone composed, smooth. "You are one of the bravest people I have ever known. Stay here and have it out with me. Let's have this discussion and be done with it." She straightened the pleats of her uniform. She didn't say a word. She couldn't. "I was dying up there, Kathryn. Don't tell me you didn't notice."

"I noticed. " she managed to say, her fingers itching to swat him straight into taciturnity. "Chakotay... you were a big boy, a grown up. How could you? Emotionally, Seven was still a child."

"How could I? he repeated. "I was trapped in the Delta Quadrant serving with a woman I once wanted more than anything in the Universe, but would never have. I was working under the banner of an institution I once revered, but had betrayed me. All the while, I was expected to pretend that I liked never moving from my command chair as an endless parade of Delta Quadrant aliens tried to blow _Voyager_ out of the sky! I was sick of it. I was sick of it all. Sick of you, sick of your suicide missions in the name of Borg liberation, sick of me. I was slowly losing sight of myself and no one seemed to care. I wanted off that ship and I had sworn not to leave. Those last few shuttle accidents—"

Kathryn glared up into his face, her blue eyes blazing, daring him to admit he might have been careless, even a single time, on purpose. He sighed, defeated. "You are such a shit, Chakotay."

"I know." He moved away from her, walking to the window. "One day, after collecting a report from Astrometrics, Seven asked me to lunch and I accepted. It was funny, but after our adventure with the Ventu I finally began to look past Seven the Drone, and experience her as the unique woman you have always been able to see."

"Don't—"

"Just listen." he said simply, pulling back the curtains and looking out through the glass panes before he continued. "She said she had been actively experimenting with relationships, trying to grow as a person. 'Fully engage in what it meant to be human through diversified types of interaction'. I realized, after the fact, she had just asked me on date." Tiny creases formed at the corners of his eyes and lips. "It was surreal. Your beautiful, intelligent, young convert —an individual obsessed with perfection, found me attractive. Me. A man who was so afraid of her at first meeting, he tried to blow her out into deep space. A man she had shared a Borg link with, and found to be acutely flawed. It was bizarre, but incredibly flattering."

"Young superwoman finds stupid aging man appealing. "

"It wasn't like that and you know it... Look, Kathryn, a part of me got a nasty kick out of being with Seven because she meant so much to you." He trudged over to where she was standing. cautiously placing his hand on her arm. "But the larger truth is, there's a lovely person under all that metal. I needed to come to terms with that... I needed to let go of you." He ran both hands through his thick hair. "What Seven and I had together wasn't perfection, but it was sincere."

Kathryn wandered over to the settee and dropped on its velvety cushions. She wasn't mad anymore. "Admiral Janeway told me that in her time-line, you and Seven married, that Seven died and that you were never the same afterward."

He swallowed hard; "I can see that —if we had remained in space with circumstances as they were. _Voyager_ was a different world. She and I both spent a lot of time living on the outside, looking in." Kathryn assumed she knew what he was implying. That she, herself, had -in effect, made both he and Seven feel that way.

"You should have told me about her, Chakotay."

"Maybe. I don't know. We'd only been on a few dates when the ship landed. By then you'd already found out about us. Again, if we'd stayed in the Delta Quadrant uninterrupted, I suppose I would have said something, in time. Try to understand. Seven was good for me. She reminded that I was interesting, that it was okay for me to want —to really want someone, to care -and to be cared for in return. I needed that." His eyes locked with her own, gently requesting she not probe any further. Kathryn's vocal cords relented. She had no desire to pick the lid off that old scab. The Admiral had provided her with enough mental pictures to last a lifetime. "Have you been in contact with her lately?" Chakotay asked, shifting gears all of a sudden.

Kathryn had been holding her breath. She released it in a rush. "What?" she asked, shaking her head. "Contact with whom?"

"Seven of Nine."

"Yes, I have. She is very good at keeping in touch. Do you talk to her much?"

"I do. She speaks of you, Icheb and the Doctor all the time."

"Really?" Kathryn mused, without malice, "She never mentions you."

"I asked her not to."

"I see."

"She didn't tell me you were teaching at the Academy. I'll have to get her back for that one."

"Why don't you let me handle it, okay?"

"Okay."

Kathryn felt deflated and raw inside. The muscles in her cheeks were sore and her mind felt overloaded. She thought Chakotay looked tired. He had never been very comfortable stripping down his personal iniquities in front of an audience. She knew it had cost him a great deal to be so direct and open up to her this way.

It was time to climb off the emotional meat hook. In the wall clock she found the excuse to stand on her feet. "I have to leave," she announced. "My mother is in town. She wants 'to clean my kitchen properly' and bake brownies. I need to straighten up a bit around the house before I change and pick her up."

"It is getting late, isn't it?" He seemed sad. "I have a presentation in the morning. I should go over my material."

The unsettled feeling had returned and she recognized it. The old pull was there, yanking at her, compelling her to hold him. That invisible thing that would always exist between them, drawing them together, like a magnet. Even now. _No. Not now. Not Yet._She extended her hand and he clasped it without hesitation. "It was good to see you, Chakotay. I am glad you are well."

"It was good to see you, too."

She stared at his hand, then let it drop. Making her way to the door, she reached for the knob; the tiny painted flowers beckoning her touch. He had said she was brave. It was true, she was brave. She was, wasn't she? _I am brave. _Kathryn dropped her head, her chin making contact with her chest... _Just do it._

"Take care." She barely heard him murmur from behind.

_Just do it__. _"Commander Chakotay," she started softy.

"Kathryn?" A civilian now, he sounded puzzled by her use of his old rank.

"You have always been the sweetest of my regrets... " She twisted the round handle and pushed forward.

"Captain Janeway," he said, her back and shoulders still in view. "You never have those in my dreams."

She forced her body through the doorframe then, her feet like bricks, her heart and lungs heavy inside her ribs. "Thank you." was the last thing she heard as she finally closed the door.

She smiled before long, a genuine lopsided grin —and wiping her tears away from her cheeks; she drifted her way down the hall. "I'd better get moving," she scolded herself. The dog was surely hungry and her mother had never been fond of waiting.

* * *

Not Yet (c) Copyright, kneipho, 2003-2013


End file.
